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David MFearon, PhD student and Advocate for Palliative Care in Mauritania

Other Contributors:

Ahmedou Ould Ahmedou

Dear Editor,

We read with great interest the paper by Rhondali et al.(1) and we
thank them for their contribution to a very worthwhile topic. We are
involved in palliative care research in Mauritania, West Africa, and we
appreciate this piece of research coming from France and we hope it will
stimulate more palliative care research, not just in France but throughout
the francophone world. As the likes of Uganda...

We read with great interest the paper by Rhondali et al.(1) and we
thank them for their contribution to a very worthwhile topic. We are
involved in palliative care research in Mauritania, West Africa, and we
appreciate this piece of research coming from France and we hope it will
stimulate more palliative care research, not just in France but throughout
the francophone world. As the likes of Uganda (2) and Malawi(3) have
benefitted from close ties to Anglophone palliative care researchers based
in Europe and North America, we believe that closer ties between France
and specifically francophone Africa would be greatly beneficial.

In addition to the barriers the paper identified, the authors propose
that difficulty with English could be a further barrier for investigators
in France. Given this suggestion we are a little surprised to note that
the authors chose to publish in an anglophone journal which perhaps could
limit the potential impact of this paper.

In the introduction, the authors state that only 2% of European
Palliative Care research came from France, however this is biased as the
citing source excluded non-English research(4) and the authors acknowledge
that most of the palliative care research from France is published, in
French, in the journal Medecine Palliative. A more encouraging picture is
gained from the 2nd Francophone Palliative Care Congress which was held in
Canada in 2013 where research was presented from Africa, North America,
Europe and Asia. We look forward to the 3rd congress which will be held in
Tunisia, 2015 and at this occasion we hope to see many more francophone
researchers coming from Africa.

This paper highlights multiple barriers which, from our experience,
reflects our context. Here, and in France, we believe creative and
multidimensional solutions are required to overcome these barriers, or
perhaps challenges is a more suitable term implying that they are
surmountable.

Yours sincerely,

David Fearon
PhD Student and Advocate for Palliative Care in Mauritania
Lancaster University
d.fearon@lancaster.ac.uk